


Victor's Lament

by ellipsism



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Happy halloween, Haunted Houses, Horror, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Katsuki Yuuri, Scary, Spooky, Supernatural Elements, Writer Katsuki Yuuri
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-27 07:10:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12576432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellipsism/pseuds/ellipsism
Summary: Katsuki Yuuri, bestselling author and famous for revealing the truth behind allegedly haunted places, travels to England after having received mail from one of his fans, saying that there’s a ghost haunting one of the old mansions there.At first he thinks it’s a job like any other but after an accident traps him inside the house with no way of getting out he must realise that this time something is different. Ominous things start happening around him and he just can’t shake the feeling that someone is watching him. Or something.





	Victor's Lament

**Author's Note:**

> Hello there, pumpkins! Happy Halloween! 
> 
> Welcome to my very first yoi fanfiction! I'm open to constructive criticism since I'm still rather new to the fandom and am always searching for ways to improve my writing skills. So if you notice anything that might help me do that just leave me a message. It would be much appreciated.
> 
> That being said I hope you enjoy this story and let the spook begin!

Katsuki Behind The Bars

The Japanese writer Yuuri Katsuki managed to land yet again on top of the bestseller lists with his new book _Locked Away_.

Yuuri Katsuki is known for his _Beyond the Secret_ series in which he reveals the truth behind famous horror locations. In every book, we get to accompany the author himself on his journey to discover the secrets behind haunted places such as the Castello di Crispino ( _Reigns of Ruins_ ) and the Leroy Asylum ( _Sacred Haven_ ). 

Seven days he spends at the place, day and night, protocolling all of his experiences and giving insight into the background story of each location. Only could his writing feel not farther from a report, instead the reader gets the illusion of following a master detective with his deductions whilst the author mixes in just the right amount of spook and horror to keep you up at night. With his unique approach on the mythbuster genre, Katsuki managed to quickly gather a strong fanbase. His number of fans grows bigger and bigger with each passing day and all of them grow more enthusiastic with each new book. 

_Locked Away_ is no exception to that. Katsuki uncovers, layer by layer, the mystery that surrounds the infamous _Riverside County Correctional Institution_ , a prison in California, and manages to combine journalistic accuracy in his research with the haunting writing style of a bestselling thriller in a way that makes his book captivating like no other available on the market. 

Read more under the cut

 

______________________

 

It felt as though the house was alive.

Standing on the porch Yuuri could feel the cold wind teasing the streaks of his hair that weren’t covered by his hat and dancing around the mansion until it almost looked like it was breathing. 

The mansion was old, very old, but that much he’d known. But he hadn’t expected it to be quite as big as it looked from the outside. Its true size, however, he had to discover from the inside.

He had to use his whole weight to open the door that was unexpectedly heavy and apparently determined to keep him outside but ultimately, he succeeded with the door’s hinges screaking in pain. 

Panting a little from the effort it had taken him to enter he tried to take in his new surroundings. But despite it being the middle of the day outside it was rather dark on the inside and Yuuri couldn’t make out anything specific. Curious he tried to switch on his torch to take a better look and fumbled a little with it through the thickness of his gloves. Frustrated he eventually pulled one off with his teeth, switched the thing on and put the glove back on.

Right in front of him was a wide staircase that must have been both impressive and inviting once upon a time but now there was no way to even climb it. The huge chandelier must have come down at some time during the last two centuries. It had damaged one side of the stairs and blocked the other one. Its thousands of small glass crystals were dull and dusty and their glimmer low, almost sad.

There were three doors on ground level. One to his left and two to his right. 

Bracketing the door behind him were two purple curtains that must hide the windows that Yuuri had seen from the outside, which explained the dim light.

He dared a few steps further into the building. 

Everything was covered in layers of dust and adorned with hundreds of spider’s webs. Yuuri shivered. He didn’t like to admit it but spiders gave him the creeps. This was probably ridiculous, seeing as at the moment he was willingly walking into a cursed house. 

He’d spent the last few weeks researching all about it. As far as curses went this one seemed to check off almost all the cliché boxes. Blood that ran down the walls, cryptic symbols appearing on dirty windows, seemingly out of nowhere, doors suddenly slamming shut and trapping the visitor. And a man. A man all in white except for a pair of piercing blue eyes. This house left nothing off limits. 

Yuuri’s readers dug that sort of thing. Even now, before having written a single word, he knew that this story would sell like crazy. 

That wasn’t what had peeked Yuuri’s curiosity though. It had been a mail he’d received from one of his fans. A Russian woman named Mila Babicheva. Apparently, she was one of those horror freaks that always explored haunted places for the sheer fun of it and although she admitted that there usually wasn’t anything true to the myth that surrounded a place she claimed that this house was different. She said that she’d met the man that so many before her had already described. She panicked and ran off but fell and sprained her ankle. 

She said the man in white had helped her. And not only that but he’d spoken to her in her mother tongue. A quick research had proven that there had once lived an English man in that house in the 1840s and 50s that had taken himself a Russian wife. Only was there no gory death or mysterious circumstances connected to them in any way, like there usually was. Just a happy couple that lived their happy life until they died peacefully. Some sources said that they also had a child but if that was true then there was little to no information about it. Yuuri didn’t even know the sex of the kid.

Still, the story was enough to have caught his interest and so he had packed his things and flown to England. Now that he was here though, he almost started to regret it.

Yuuri had visited countless of so-called haunted places. Had researched all about them, visited them, examined them and ultimately written about them. It was his job. But never once had he believed in them. And although this place wasn’t quite enough to make him change his mind about his believes there sure was something eerie about it. 

Something that made him aware of his own heartbeat and the way his lungs filled themselves with the mouldy air that left his lips in white puffs.

He shook his head as if he was trying to rid himself of the strange sensation through it. He was being childish. This ghost would prove itself to be as real as all the other ones.

Deciding that the stairs looked like they were in no condition to carry his weight he started with the first room to his right. 

It was huge, just like the entrance room and in the exact same condition, dust and spiders’ webs being the most prominent characteristic. Again, the windows had been covered with the same purple fabric. 

Strolling through the room he took a closer look. There were remains of a fireplace on the wall opposite to him, coal and ashes smeared all over the floor and parts of the wall and there were pieces of wood scattered all around him. Most of them were nothing more than splinters, about the size of Yuuri’s hand but there was one piece that was larger than the others. Yuuri picked it up and examined it further. It looked like a chair leg. 

With widened eyes, he realised that that must be exactly what it was. The masses of splintered wood below his feet nothing more than the furniture ripped to shreds. But by whom? Or rather by what? It seemed impossible for a person to possess the strength to tear a chair into pieces that small. 

Yuuri felt a shiver running down his back and decided that he’d seen enough of this room. He let the chair leg drop and turned around to leave, passing the wide staircase that had greeted him at his entrance and walking into the room left to it.

Surely there was a logical explanation to this. 

Since there was no way that someone could have torn the furniture into splinters that small with their bare hands, and it hadn't looked like the work of a wild animal, the only reasonable explanation was that it had been shredded with a machine. Someone must have destroyed the furniture and then scattered the remains all over the room to encourage the horror stories surrounding the place. It wouldn’t be the first-time people did that. 

Now that he went through this explanation in his head he thought he might have seen that the splinters were almost all roughly the same size, except for the chair leg. That was just proof of the whole thing being machine-made.

The new room was about the same size as the last one but this time all the furniture it contained was still intact; something that relieved Yuuri more than he liked to admit. He had no idea why everything in this mansion put him off so much but the fact that it did annoyed him to no end. He was used to visiting allegedly haunted places and spent whole nights there. It had never troubled him before but ten minutes in some random mansion in England and he was already jumping out of his skin at some demolished furniture. 

Yuuri raised his torch to see more of his surroundings. 

In the middle of the room stood a large table, long enough for several dozen people to sit there if they so wanted to but only three chairs were set around it, all of them close together at the left end of the table. 

As long as no one had messed with the number of chairs at that table (and Yuuri couldn’t fathom why anyone would have any reason to do so) then the English man and his Russian wife probably had a third person living with them. The theory of them having a child just became more likely.

Yuuri’s torchlight travelled along the walls to reveal richly painted wallpapers. Time had yellowed the paper and paled the colours but it had not managed to erase the paintings that covered the walls and showed hundreds of birds that sat on fragile twigs or flew into a clear summer sky. Yuuri marvelled at the beauty of it, wishing he could have seen it back when the colours must have been still vibrant. However, the decay of the paint wasn’t as bad as it could have been, the curtains that covered the windows shielding the art from destructive daylight. 

A soft gust of wind that had found its way through one of the many cracks of the mansion, stroked Yuuri’s cheek. He could already feel his face growing numb from the cold. He put his torch between his teeth for a second to be able to bury himself deeper into his jacket and put his scarf tighter around his neck. When his hands were free again he jammed the torch under his armpit so that he could wrap his arms around himself to keep himself warm without losing sight of his surroundings. It was below freezing point and in preparation for that, he had packed himself into his thickest winter clothes. But despite having protected him throughout all these years, they seemed to fail him now. It was as if there was a cold seeping down to his bones that he couldn’t seem to get rid of. 

Deciding that the best way to defeat the chill would be to keep moving he started walking around the room to take in any details that he might have missed when he’d taken in the room as a whole.

There were several small stands with vases and candle holders standing around. He passed a door that must lead deeper into the mansion and something that was covered by even more purple fabric. Probably another, smaller window. 

The mischief-makers that had demolished the first room he’d been in had apparently left this room as it was. It made little sense to Yuuri to only trash one room if you wanted to keep up the act of a haunted house. On the other hand, he hadn’t examined the whole room yet so maybe he still had to discover the spook that lurked in it. 

And only a second later he found it. It wasn’t abnormal or spooky. This time whoever was behind all this hadn’t put as much effort into covering up the fact that the deed was obviously done by someone human. 

Yuuri took the torch back into his one hand whilst reaching for the wall with his other. The wallpaper that was painted with trees and birds had been pulled off in this corner of the room. Yuuri hadn’t noticed it at first because it was on the same side as the door. 

He let the light of his torch wander along the torn paper. It looked like it had been ripped off in a fit, leaving only the blank stone to stare at. If Yuuri had been a little more poetically inclined he would have been tempted to say it looked almost like a wound. Loose stripes still hung off the wall, some of them carrying specks of colour that didn’t look like it belonged to the original painting. There were scratches all around that seemed to have been caused by human nails, judging by the width and collocation of them. Only – Yuuri stepped a little closer and ran his hand along one of the scratches – they were carved deep into the stone of the wall. 

Yuuri formed a claw with his hands and traced some of the scratches by mimicking the motion that he assumed had been made by whoever had left them. Dust and sand trickled down onto the floor from where he ran over the stone. His fingertips fit perfectly into the carvings. 

They looked like they’d been made by a grown man. But which man had nails that could mould stone?

Out of the corner of his eye, Yuuri saw something move. He whirled around, holding the torch in a tight grip. He could hear his pulse speeding up.

The movement had come from the purple curtain from which Yuuri had thought it would cover a small window. Now that he thought about it again he realised that it made very little sense. The assumed window was on the same wall as the door and unless that door didn’t lead outside the mansion then that window would have to be between two rooms. Although that wasn’t impossible it would be more likely for a house that age that the curtain was hiding something else.

It could be that it had only been the wind that had caused the movement but he had to make sure.

Trying to ignore every cell in his body that screamed for him to turn around and leave the room, he crept forwards, torchlight firmly held onto the fabric. 

When he stood in front of it he took one deep breath and switched the torch into his left hand. He positioned himself slightly diagonal to the curtain so that he could easily step aside if something would attack him. Like a cat, for example. Or if there was a shelf behind the curtain and as soon as he pulled back the fabric down there could be things falling out of the shelf. 

But most likely there wasn’t anything there and he was just being paranoid.

He tried to push every last worry out of his mind and took another deep breath. With a shaking hand, he reached out and lifted the curtain.

A flash of light, a face, twisted in fear. Yuuri screamed.

The curtain slipped out of his hand as he stumbled back. In search for support, he stepped to the side to hold onto the wall. His hip bumped against one of the small stands.

Yuuri turned his head just in time to witness the stand rock back dangerously far, the vase about to slide off the edge. Out of reflex, he reached out to catch the stand but with both of his hands full he had to helplessly watch the vase fall, like in slow motion, and shatter into a million pieces.

The sound cut through the empty silence of the mansion like a dagger. 

It felt wrong and intruding. A robber breaking into a house and hitting pots and pans together to make his presence known. 

It felt odd because as soon as Yuuri became aware of the sound’s wrongness he realised that it hadn’t actually been silent in the mansion before. The wind outside whistled and pushed through the cracks and gaps of the mansion, making the house moan and screak. Still, it felt silent in a way. As if the howling was part of the place whilst Yuuri and every sound he made was not.

Panting a little, Yuuri slowly turned his attention back to the curtain. His heart beat in his chest like it wanted to jump out of it and he could feel the hands in his gloves turn sweaty. 

Whatever was behind that curtain, he needed to know what it was. Or who.

He banned that thought as soon as it arose. He’d been sure he had seen a face but that was impossible. There was no one here but him.

With shaking hands, he reached for the curtain again. His fingertips brushed the fabric, blood rushed in his ears, his pulse fluttered. 

Trying to control his breathing he braced himself and with one determined pull he tore the curtain off.

Again, a flash of light that blinded him. Yuuri shielded his eyes and turned his torch away and the second he did the light was gone. 

Yuuri blinked and the man in front of him did so too. It was a mirror. He had been scared of his own reflection. A hysteric laugh bubbled out of him as relief flooded his body.

Yuuri let the fabric drop to the floor. He really needed to get a grip on himself, he was being ridiculous. This place was no different from all the others. Phichit must have gotten to him. Other than Yuuri, his friend believed in the existence of everything even remotely supernatural, especially ghosts, and always urged him to be careful on his missions. 

With his hands still shaking a little from the adrenaline rush, he took out his phone, pulling off his glove so that he could access the touchscreen. He wanted to record some notes so that he didn’t forget anything when he started writing. He always did so when visiting one of the ‘haunted’ places but this time it had almost slipped his mind. Everything in this house threw him off.

“Day one in the old English mansion: Something is definitely off, probably some people trying to make the place look like it’s haunted. The main staircase in the entrance room is blocked, not safe to climb. One of the rooms, I’m guessing the living room, has been vandalised. All the furniture has been shredded, almost to the point of it being unrecognizable. The curtains in every room are drawn closed. The dining room seems to be in good condition but someone tore the wallpaper off in one of the corners and there are scratch marks in the stone. They look like they were made by a human hand. Whoever is trying to trick people is putting a lot of effort into it. There’s a mirror in the dining room as well that was also covered by the same fabric- “

A loud crash interrupted him. 

In less than a second Yuuri’s pulse, which had just calmed itself down, was up and high again. He could feel his breath growing shallow as he finished the recording. The sound had definitely come from behind the closed door to Yuuri’s left. 

It was probably just a cat, Yuuri tried to calm himself but it did little to pacify his racing heart. Taking some deep breaths, he braced himself for whatever would await him behind that door. He had planned to go through it anyway since he wanted to explore as much as possible of the mansion. 

Yuuri had barely touched the handle of the door as it already swung open, rusted hinges protesting loudly. Everything in this house was so worn down by time, that Yuuri figured that if he wouldn’t be killed by some kind of ghost or monster that inhabited the place the roof would surely come down and squash him like a pancake. He must have lost all sense that he willingly walked into this death trap, fully intending on staying several nights in here.

Slowly Yuuri walked into the room that had presented itself to him. One look was enough to identify it as the used-to-be kitchen of the mansion. It was relatively small for a house of that size. A counter ran along the walls of the room and in the centre of it was a large table on which mountains of pots and pans were piled on top of each other, barricading the view to whatever hid behind them. 

Yuuri let the spotlight of his torch wander off the dusty metal.

"Hello? Is anyone there?" He felt ridiculous asking into the empty room but he couldn't shake the feeling that he wasn't alone. 

A rustling sounded from Yuuri's right that made him jerk around in an instant.

"Show yourself!" His voice was layered with fear but talking out loud helped him to feel braver.

Nothing but the counter, a cupboard, and a few wooden boxes stared back at him. He pocketed his phone that was still in his left hand and clutched the torch in his right hand tighter. Carefully he walked into the direction where he had thought to have heard the rustling come from. 

First, he approached the boxes. There were three of them, one that was on top of another and the third was a bit to the side. All of them were covered with pieces of linen fabric, like an old sack of potatoes. Yuuri supposed that the boxes must have held provisions once but all the food should be rotten by now. Still, they gave excellent hiding spots for small animals like mice. The rustling had probably been caused by a little mouse in search of something edible.

Taking one deep breath Yuuri gripped the linen cloth from the top of the first box and ripped it off to reveal what was inside.

But he had underestimated the force with which he had uncovered the box. The linen cloth got caught in a piece of wood from the box and promptly the whole thing toppled down onto the floor.  
Yuuri coughed and tried to blink through the cloud of dust that had stirred up in the accident. When he was finally able to see clearly again though he stared down at nothing more than an empty box, now cracked at one side where the dry wood hat splintered under the force with which it had hit the floor.

Calmed a little by the relief he felt at the lack of anything alive or maybe even dangerous, Yuuri began searching the remaining boxes as well; both of which turned out to be just as empty as the first one.

Yuuri frowned and went to search through the cupboard and the counter too. There must be something, anything. He was sure that he hadn't been imagining the sound. But when he found nothing but yawning emptiness and dirt in that part of the kitchen he finally had to surrender and accept that it probably wasn't more than the wind howling through the cracks of the mansion and playing tricks with his mind. Now that he thought about it he wasn't even sure if it actually had been a rustling. Maybe it had been more of a whistling, really. Those were rather similar sounds, were they not?

The ringing of his phone was what pulled him out of his thoughts. He took it out of his pocket to see who was calling him and was greeted by Phichit's familiar face. With a sudden jolt, he remembered that he'd forgotten to call his friend as soon as he'd arrived at the mansion like he usually did whenever he was on a work expedition. With regret gnawing at his heart he accepted the call and pressed his phone to his ear.

"Hello, Phichit! I'm sorry I didn't call you. I totally forgot."

"Don't scare me like that, Yuuri! I thought you were already cut open by some demon or locked in a basement by a ghost!" Phichit believed that the reason why Yuuri hadn't found proof of the existence of any supernatural creatures was that they didn't show themselves to just anyone but he was still worried someday something might happen to his friend if he kept provoking ghosts, ghouls, and gnomes by intruding into their territory.

"I don't think that's what ghosts do..." Yuuri pondered, wondering what it was that ghosts did. Howl all night? Go through walls? Rustle their chains? That didn't sound like a fun way of existing but maybe Yuuri's perspective on that matter was simply too limited.

"You don't know that for sure. I'm glad you're okay. How is the new case?"

Yuuri sighed, considering whether he should tell his friend the truth. He didn't want to worry him but he didn't like lying to him either. 

"It's... different," he finally settled on. "I don't know. This whole place just seems odd. But so far I haven't seen anything that would prove the existence of a supernatural being living here. It looks like some kids dressed up the place to make it look like it's haunted."

"Some kids, huh? Be careful, Yuuri. Sometimes things actually are what they seem to be."

"I'm always careful," was Yuuri's immediate response. "Besides, this place has nothing on the mines two years ago. No blood, no ominous writing or satanic symbols, just some broken furniture and a lot of dust. I'll be fine, don't worry."

"If you say so..." Phichit didn't sound too convinced so Yuuri was eager on escaping the conversation, not wanting to discuss the topic any further. He didn't need to have his friend increase his paranoia only further. This place already had him on edge as it was.

"Listen, I need to hang up now but I'll try and call you tonight. No promises though, I don't know how well the connection here is."

"Alright, goodbye. Take care!"

"Bye, Phichit!"

He hung up and pocketed his phone again. This time he also pulled back on his remaining glove that he had stripped off in order to be able to access his phone. The cold had already rendered the tips of his fingers numb. He massaged his hand through the glove to try to warm it up and get some feeling back into it. 

Now that he had excluded the possibility of immediate danger from the right corner of the kitchen he could go back to his old routine: ghost-searching. His conversation with Phichit had put things a little into perspective again. His friend believed in the possibility of supernatural beings because he thought it would be exciting if they existed and he enjoyed the thrill of that thought. Yuuri didn't. He liked logic and reasoning and the existence of something simply inexplicable was ridiculous to him (and if he was honest with himself then maybe also frightening). 

So, he ignored the tingling sensation in his neck that tried to convince him he was being watched and pushed back the fear that something might jump him every time he opened a cupboard. His anxiety was just acting up a bit more than usual, he told himself. This house was just a little more eerie than all the other places he'd visited so far, he decided. He banned the possibility that he might just be lying to himself or that he might be wrong from his mind. 

The caution with which he opened the cupboard was nothing more than the reasonable worry that the wood might splinter under his touch, the doors might unhinge themselves if he pushed too strong or there might be something inside that could fall onto him if he didn't watch out. There wasn't anything else to it. 

Still, when he was done searching through the kitchen without finding any proof of anything even remotely supernatural inhabiting the place, he lost some of the tension he hadn't realised he'd been holding. The only thing that this room had been hiding was yet another door.

"Well, that wasn't so bad," he said out loud, almost surprised. He should have known better than to be so foolish to challenge fate like that. 

Assuming that he'd overcome the worst and bathing in a false sense of security Yuuri opened the next door.

 

-

 

Just like with the entrance door it took him a while to open it, having to slam his full weight against it until it finally fell open. As soon as it did the foul smell of mouldy and damp air hit him with such a force that he had to cover his nose with his scarf to be able to breathe without having to gag. 

The sounds of the outside wind became louder and Yuuri didn't need long to figure out why. The room that he'd entered was small and held nothing more than a narrow flight of winding, made out of wood, that must lead up to the first floor and another one that must lead to the basement. Only, a part of the left wall was missing, exposing the inside of the room to rough weathers. It was a big, gaping hole, like a twisted mouth, that someone had tried to fix with an array of blankets that probably hadn't even survived the first rain. They were a dirty and clam mess on the floor, only few of them had not given up yet; the cords with which they had been secured still clinging onto the jagged pieces of raw stone that stood from the wall like deformed teeth. 

The wind must have pressed against the backside of the door and that must have been why Yuuri had been having trouble opening it. He considered closing it again to see what the rest of the ground floor still held for him. There had to be at least one more room left; he'd seen the door to it in the entrance hall and considering the size of the mansion that wasn't the only room on this level still waiting for him.

The cold air rushed around him and snuck under his clothing, tickling goose bumps onto his neck where his scarf didn't cover him. Might as well just get it over with. After all, he could always come back down again.

Yuuri started climbing the stairs that led to the first floor, the steps creaking under his feet. He wanted to hold onto the handrail to feel safer but it looked like it couldn't support his weight anyway so he thought it to be best not to touch it. Just when he had almost climbed the complete set of stair he heard that rustling again. The same sound that he'd already heard in the kitchen but then written off to his lively imagination. Again, he doubted for a second if he had actually heard it. After all, the wind was howling and he was wearing a hat that covered his ears and the rustling wasn't a very loud sound but he didn't think he would imagine the same thing twice. 

He thought the sound had come from above and so he slowly raised the torch to illuminate whatever was going on there. As soon as the light touched the ceiling something small and fast flew down onto Yuuri.

He screamed and ducked whilst covering his head with his arms out of pure instinct. He could feel it hitting his back. Panicking he ran the last few steps up the stairs on all fours. There was a deafening flattering right next to his right ear and as something striped his face he realised with horror that there was something caught up in his scarf. 

Blindly he hit after it, his hand touching something very much alive. He tore at his scarf in hysterics. Shouting for it to get off of him in Japanese. Tears clouded his vision but he could sense that he had almost reached the end of the staircase. One hand still tugging at his scarf, the other reaching out to the door that led to the next floor as though that might bring it closer he did another step.

Suddenly the wood under his foot gave out. With a shout, Yuuri fell, instinctively holding his hands out in front of him to catch himself. With only one leg dangling in nothingness he fell awkwardly sideways but the impact of his weight was too much for the brittle wood and the rest of the step crashed as well as soon as his body hit the stairs. His hands desperately searched for something to hold onto as his lower body hung helplessly in the air. His right hand found a pole of the handrail and clung to it whilst his left hand scraped along the steps in front of him, splinters burying themselves under his nails. Somewhere in his subconscious, he noticed that at least whatever had been caught up in his scarf was now free again. It didn't feel like much of a solace though. 

Panting he tried to haul himself up again by the handrail but with terror, he saw that he was right about it not supporting his weight. With agonizing slowness, he witnessed the pole splintering at its base. He tried to put more weight on his left arm that was still lying on the step in front of him to relieve the pole but he knew that if the handrail gave out then he would fall all the way down that he had just climbed up. He should have run downstairs instead of upstairs, he scolded himself. But now was no time to beat himself up over it. He tried kicking his legs up to see if he could somehow swing his feet back onto the steps on the other side of the hole he had created. His shoes hit the steps from the downside and he heard the sound of crashing wood again. Okay, so this didn't work. 

The muscles in his arms began to ache with the effort it took to hold him up. Maybe, if he tried to pull himself up some more by the pole of the handrail, then he could grab the one next to it and maybe then he could haul up his upper body into safety? He would risk the pole he was currently holding to full end splinter though and there was no guarantee that he would be able to reach the next one before the first one gave out. On the other hand, the one he was currently holding wouldn't last forever anyway and this was probably his best shot at avoiding a fall that could break his spine. 

Trying to calm his breath he focused on what he was going to do. He swung his legs a few more time to let the momentum ease his action when he then finally threw himself forwards. One strong pull at the pole and it gave out. Yuuri reached forward, stretching his arm as far as possible before gravity would pull him back down again. His fingertips caressed the second pole, close enough to touch. But not close enough to grasp.

Yuuri slid downwards again, this time with everything that might be able to support him out of reach. Helplessly he kicked his legs again, knowing that he wouldn't find anything with his feet but not willing to give up yet.

And then, miraculously, just before he thought he'd fall and crash on the floor in a mess of blood and broken bones, his right foot found resistance. Without thinking about it he used it to catapult himself forwards, this time grasping the second pole and hauling his upper body up onto what was left of the top flight of stairs and into safety. As fast as he could he let his legs follow and climbed the last three steps until he reached the door. It opened effortlessly and as soon as he stumbled into the new room he sunk to the ground, overwhelmed by both fear and relief. 

As soon as he had his breathing back under control, he risked a look to where he had come from, his pulse still hammering in his chest and head so hard and fast that he thought it might never calm down again.

He'd dropped his torch sometime during his accident but enough evening light fell through the hole in the wall to show him the damage he had caused. There were several steps missing in the staircase and a part of the handrail was torn off at one side, the remains scattered somewhere on the floor where they were out of Yuuri's sight. 

He'd probably feel guilty for having demolished the stairs if there had not been another, more urgent thought occupied his mind.

The empty space in the stairs was too wide to overbridge it. 

Yuuri had no way of getting down again.

**Author's Note:**

> Sooo, what is going to happen next? Is Yuuri going to find his way downstairs again? What else is he going to find in that mansion? And, most importantly, when is Victor going to make an appearance? Stay tuned for more!
> 
> Please leave a comment or message me on [tumblr](http://dontblinkamelia.tumblr.com/) to tell me what you thought of it so far. Anything you liked especially? Anything you liked to see improved? I'm dying to hear it all!
> 
> A big thank you to May for being the most wonderful beta in the universe and for dedicating her time to a story from a fandom she's not even in. What an angel. ([Her tumblr](https://dust-and-shadxws.tumblr.com/), [her blog](https://aroomfullofbooks.blog/))
> 
> Also, I have an important anouncement to make regarding the updates for this story. I am definetely going to finish it, so do not worry about that. However, it might take me some time because I am currently also working on [another project](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11104920/chapters/24779922) which has priority for me right now. As soon as I'm done with that I will dedicate all my writing time to this and updates will occur more frequently. Until then I thank you for your patience. <3


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